Spirit's current livery is seen here an an Oct. 16, 2012, photo taken at the Fort Lauderdale airport. Spirit's previous silver and gray livery is seen in the background. Eliot J. Schechter for USA TODAY

Spirit Airlines unveiled a dramatic new paint scheme for its planes, switching to this black-and-yellow scheme. Here, the first Spirit plane to get the new is seen Sept. 15, 2014, at the Premier Aviation Overhaul Center in Rome, N.Y. Ben Mutzabaugh, USA TODAY

Spirit Airlines unveiled a dramatic new paint scheme for its planes, switching to this black-and-yellow scheme. Here, the first Spirit plane to get the new is seen Sept. 15, 2014, at the Premier Aviation Overhaul Center in Rome, N.Y. Ben Mutzabaugh, USA TODAY

Spirit Airlines unveiled a dramatic new paint scheme for its planes, switching to this black-and-yellow scheme. Here, the first Spirit plane to get the new is seen Sept. 15, 2014, at the Premier Aviation Overhaul Center in Rome, N.Y. Ben Mutzabaugh, USA TODAY

Spirit Airlines unveiled a dramatic new paint scheme for its planes, switching to this black-and-yellow scheme. Here, the first Spirit plane to get the new is seen Sept. 15, 2014, at the Premier Aviation Overhaul Center in Rome, N.Y. Ben Mutzabaugh, USA TODAY

Spirit Airlines unveiled a dramatic new paint scheme for its planes, switching to this black-and-yellow scheme. Here, the first Spirit plane to get the new is seen Sept. 15, 2014, at the Premier Aviation Overhaul Center in Rome, N.Y. Ben Mutzabaugh, USA TODAY

Spirit Airlines will open a new pilot and flight attendant base in Orlando. The company announced the move on the same day it launched the first flights of a big expansion there that was revealed in June.

Spirit’s new crew base will open Dec. 1, 2018. Initially, about 150 crew will be assigned to Orlando. The airline said the move will help support its ongoing expansion in Orlando and will be in addition to about 150 airport services jobs it has already added there. Spirit said it expects "to bring hundreds of more in-flight positions to Orlando this spring."

“Orlando is the perfect location for our new crew base and our international expansion,” Spirit CEO Bob Fornaro said in a statement. “We’ve served more than 22 million guests in our 25 years in Orlando. We’re excited to continue our historic expansion here and to create hundreds of jobs in the community.”

Spirit is launching new service Thursday from Orlando to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico; Guatemala City; Panama City, Panama; and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

Those routes – part of a major expansion push by Spirit in Orlando – will be followed the Friday launches of two more routes (San Pedro Sula, Honduras; and San Jose, Costa Rica) and another on Saturday (San Salvador, El Salvador).

They're among about a dozen new Orlando routes Spirit has announced in recent months.

Overall, Spirit’s expansion in Orlando will up its schedule there to a peak of 49 daily flights. That will put Orlando neck-and-neck with Las Vegas as Spirit’s second-busiest base, Fornaro said in an interview with USA TODAY’s Today in the Sky blog in June. Fort Lauderdale, also home to the company's headquarters, remains its busiest.

Posted!

An Alaska Airlines Airbus A321 painted in the colors of the San Francisco Giants baseball team rests at a gate in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in August 2018. Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren, special to USA TODAY